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Blood, 8 January 2009, Vol. 113, No. 2, pp. 462-469. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on September 24, 2008; DOI 10.1182/blood-2008-05-155952. This Article Full Text (PDF) Supplemental Figure All Versions of this Article: blood-2008-05-155952v1 113/2/462    most recent Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Rights and Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Jiao, Y. Articles by Torti, S. V. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Jiao, Y. Articles by Torti, S. V. Related Collections Related Article in Blood Online Social Bookmarking                   What's this?  Previous Article  |  Next Article  Submitted May 7, 2008 Accepted August 15, 2008 Curcumin, a cancer chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic agent, is a biologically active iron chelator Yan Jiao, John Wilkinson IV, Xiumin Di, Wei Wang, Heather Hatcher, Nancy D. Kock, Ralph D'Agostino Jr., Mary Ann Knovich, Frank M. Torti, and Suzy V. Torti* Department of Cancer Biology, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, United States Department of Pathology, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, United States Public Health Sciences, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, United States Section of Hematology/Oncology, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, United States Comprehensive Cancer Center, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, United States Department of Biochemistry, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, United States * Corresponding author; email: storti{at}wfubmc.edu. Curcumin is a natural product currently in human clinical trials for a variety of neoplastic, preneoplastic and inflammatory conditions. We previously observed that in cultured cells, curcumin exhibits properties of an iron chelator. To test whether the chelator activity of curcumin is sufficient to induce iron deficiency in vivo, mice were placed on diets containing graded concentrations of both iron and curcumin for 26 weeks. Mice receiving the lowest level of dietary iron exhibited borderline iron deficiency, with reductions in spleen and liver iron, but little effect on hemoglobin, hematocrit, transferrin saturation or plasma iron. Against this backdrop of subclinical iron deficiency, curcumin exerted profound effects on systemic iron, inducing a dose-dependent decline in hematocrit, hemoglobin, serum iron and transferrin saturation, the appearance of microcytic anisocytotic red blood cells, and decreases in spleen and liver iron content. Curcumin repressed synthesis of hepcidin, a peptide that plays a central role in regulation of systemic iron balance. These results demonstrate that curcumin has the potential to affect systemic iron metabolism, particularly in a settling of subclinical iron deficiency. This may affect the use of curcumin in patients with marginal iron stores or those exhibiting the anemia of cancer and chronic disease. CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this? Related Article in Blood Online: Ironing out complementary medicine Robert T. Means, Jr Blood 2009 113: 270-271. [Full Text] [PDF]

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